I was wondering around the Prague Castle when I realised that I needed to pick up some souvenirs for friends back home in Australia so I decided to wonder into one of the shops there (and to be honest with you, I have seen more souvenir shops in one city in Europe that I have seen in my entire life in Australia - we Australians really have no concept of mass tourism). Anyway, a friend of mine wanted something arcane, and to be honest with you, I did not realise that you could get any more arcane than Prague. However, as I wondered around this store, I found this book, and simply going on the title I decided to purchase it.

This is a collection of stories that arose from the Prague Ghetto. For those who do not know, the Ghetto is not a slum (as is the common usage of the word) but derives from the island in Venice where the Jews were locked up at night. From this one location all of the Jewish Quarters throughout Europe derived their name, and thus the Prague Ghetto is basically the Jewish Quarter of Prague. However, since the Jews have been pretty mistreated throughout the years, and the places in the cities that they were relegated to were dumps, the connection between a Ghetto and a slum arose.

However, this quaint little book tells the story of how the Jews arrived in Prague and the challenges they faced there. Mind you, these stories are legends and there is a lot of mystical elements surrounding them. The arrival of the Jews came as a prophecy to the first Queen of Bohemia (the land of which Prague was the capital) that if she were to allow the Jews to settle there then her land will prosper. It did.

It also tells the stories of how various Jewish landmarks (such as the Old-New Synagogue, and a couple of streets) came about. Once again, these stories have the elements of legend in them, such as the Jew who upset his patron by praising God whenever his patron gave him money. The patron then withdrew his support, and in the Jew's darkest hour, a monkey full of gold came flying through the window.

It should be noted that all of the Jews are upstanding and moral characters in the legends. They are always honest (well, okay, not always, but the characters that the stories promote are) and are always fair in their dealings. However, they also face persecution, but in these times there is always divine intervention (such as when the Emperor Wenceclaus falls into a deep sleep and signs a document revoking his expulsion of the Jews).

However, I wish to finish with the story that caused me to purchase this little book: the Golem. I have always known the golem as something that came out of Dungeons and Dragons, and may have originated from some early fantasy book (such as say [book:Frankenstein]). However, it turns out that it did not. It was a Jewish myth. I had only just discovered that, so when I found a book about the Golem I quickly snapped it up. I won't go into any further details of the Golem (and for those who are interested I am sure you can easily find it on the internet), but this book was a fascinating read, if you can find it (and hopefully that does not involve a trip to Prague).

I suspect that Vermes is probably the foremost expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls since it seems that every book about it is either written, or edited, by him, but then that is simply an observation that I have made. For those not familiar with these ancient documents they were found hidden in a cave by the Dead Sea in about 1947 by a young shepherd and they have been classified as one of the most significant archaeological finds of the last century. Basically they are a collection of scrolls written by a Roman era Jewish sect known as the Essenes and among the many non-biblical scrolls they also contain a complete copy of the book of Isaiah and pretty much sections of every other book of the Old Testament, and most importantly, some of these scroll date back to at least 100 BC. In fact, other than the Babylonian tablets and the Egyptian wall writings, they are probably some of the oldest texts that we have.

The Essenes were an isolationist Jewish sect that had become disgusted with both sides of Jewish politics, being those collaborating with Rome and those rebelling against Rome, and took the third option: leave society and go an establish your own, pure, society in the middle of the desert. These scrolls actually contain details of their cleansing rituals as well as admission requirements for new members. In fact, they appear to be very cultish, effectively rejecting the world of the day and having pretty much nothing to do with it. They would be very similar to some of the isolationist Christian cults that we see around the place, though probably closer to say the likes of Branch Davidian than some of the cults that actually abide by the rules of society, while living separate from them (remember, the whole Branch Davidian fiasco really came down to the fact that they we so isolationist that they refused to pay taxes, which is why the FBI came down so hard of them - they were not terrorists like the Jewish Zealots were).

These scrolls also give us an insight into the ways that the Old Testament books were written, in that we have a number of scrolls which contain merely outlines of the books rather than the complete text itself, as well as commentaries on various aspects of these books. The Essenes were very traditional Jews, so the scrolls really only contain literature that relates to Jewish Literature than to any of the foreign influences that we find in the Gnostic Gospels. The Jewish mind set of the day was generally to reject anything that was not Jewish (unless you were a collaborator and then all bets were off).

These scrolls are pre-Christian, and in fact pre-Christ, so despite suggestions to the contrary, there are no New Testament documents among the collection. However, we do have glimpses of the idea of the Messiah in these texts and what the Essenes at least were looking for. However, it appears that they were not looking for one, but two, separate Messiahs, one being a teacher and another being a ruler. Many of the fundamentalist Jews of the day were expecting a warrior King, along the line of David and Joshua, rather than a king of Wisdom, along the line of Moses and Solomon. This also comes out amongst the scrolls, particularly with references to the Kittim, which we understand as being the Romans.

Remember, things were different in those days in that it was a lot easier to isolate oneself from society that it is now. Despite the vast tracks of emptiness that cover the world, it is difficult for us Westerners to live a self sufficient lifestyle; the government will always intrude. Now I do not necessarily consider modern government to be a bad thing, but I am not all in favour of the current practices either. In a way I consider that governments are a necessary evil. It differed for the Jews than to me though because I am a citizen of my nation-state, whereas the Jews were an occupied people. Whatever freedoms they had were always dictated to them by the Roman legate.